Vernon looked at the floor. ‘Good. Good. That’s good.’

‘Bit ironic, isn’t it, mate?’

‘What’s that?’

‘You arguing with me two days ago about your son being in jail, and how what he did was wrong. And here you find yourself imprisoned. All on account of your boy. It’s ironic.’

‘Hilarious.’

‘I didn’t say it was funny.’

Vernon said, ‘Is she alright, though? She’s not worried.’

‘She’s fine. I think she’s more mad than anything.’

‘Yeah. That sounds like her.’

Kelly asked, ‘You going to tell them where the car is?’

Vernon shook his head. Huffed a bit, looked around at the cell.

‘What’re you going to do, then?’

‘Can you go and talk to Sharon for me? I don’t even know if I’m actually under arrest.’

‘What do you mean you don’t know?’

‘Don’t they need to press charges or something? She just walked me in here and cuffed me to the bench. Said something vague about me stealing a car, but there wasn’t anything specific.’

‘Did you steal it?’

‘I borrowed a car somebody wants back.’

Kelly frowned. ‘Okay, I’ll have a word with her.’

‘Thank you.’

‘But you still haven’t answered my question.’

‘I said I borrowed it.’

‘No. What are you going to do?’

‘I have no idea, mate. I just want to go home. They said they’d leave off Caleb. I’ll give them the car back.’

‘Alright,’ Kelly said. ‘Alright. You need anything else?’

Vernon looked at him. Held up his hand as high as it would go and shook the cuffs. ‘I need to get out of here. Get out of these.’

Kelly stood. On the other side of the door he said through the bars, ‘Sorry, mate, I have to lock this.’

‘I get it.’

He turned the key in the lock.

‘I don’t get it, actually. Where does she think I’m going with my arm chained to this bench?’

‘It’s just procedure, mate. I’ll go and talk to her.’

His footsteps down the corridor, the door opening and shutting. The fear in Vernon’s breast whispered to him through the handcuffs. He would never get out of them. Would be forever chained to this bench.

It took a while—he estimated half an hour—before he started to panic again. William Kelly did not return and Vernon kept straining for the sound of the door. Sharon had done something, sent the preacher, his promise of salvation, home. Locked him up too, maybe, somewhere different. Vernon struggled to imagine Kelly abandoning him but with each passing minute he grew more anxious. What could they be talking about? Sharon convincing his friend of his poor character? He didn’t even know what he’d been charged with.

What seemed an eternity passed. He looked at the walls and his hands and kept shifting his wrist beneath the metal. His son had been through this exact circumstance and he, his father, had been entirely absent. What must he have felt facing this on his own? After Mel had gone to the cops, that poor girl, they’d seized his son and placed him maybe in this very cell. When Vernon learned what had happened he had taken the boat out to Snake Island and camped there for several days. He had left behind his wife and son. Abandoned them both. He hadn’t been thinking properly. His son, his boy, must’ve been sitting here waiting for somebody to come, just as Vernon now was. Somebody he trusted. The worst sort of betrayal. The sun rising and setting and his father on the beach with a fire cooking cans and watching the waves, doing his best not to think of his boy striking that young woman in the face. His own flesh, rending violence on something so innocent. That lovely girl.